Analysis: Sir Keir Starmer started in stirring terms – “the chance to change the lives of millions of people for the better” – but limped into one of the more prosaic resignation speeches given outside No 10 Downing St in the past decade.
There have been many exit speeches in that time. Today, June 23, marks 10 years on from the pivotal Brexit referendum that started Britain’s slow divorce from the European Union.
Since David Cameron announced his resignation as prime minister, the morning after that 2016 referendum, the UK has rattled through leaders: Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer – and then, who? Andy Burnham? Kemi Badenoch? Nigel Farage?
Starmer claimed to have restored stability – securing trade deals, standing with Ukraine, rebuilding the UK’s relationships in Europe – even as his failed premiership consigned the nation to further volatility. “I will do everything I can to ensure an orderly handover of power,” he said, dully.
It’s difficult to know where in the world to look for solid democratic leadership.
Remember the G8? That was the global leadership group comprising eight of the world’s major industrial economies. Nowadays it’s the G7 after Russia’s ousting after its invasion of Crimea in 2014. And at the G7 meeting in France last week it looked wobbly. The UK, US, France, Germany and Italy are united only in their deep political polarisation and fiscal crises. Their leaders struggle to align their foreign policies, and smack talk each other.
Starmer attended as a lame duck leader, facing a domestic leadership challenge, unable to secure a one-on-one meeting with Donald Trump, and undermined by his defence secretary’s resignation in protest at the prime minister’s unwillingness to commit to further military spending.
Trump pre-empted Starmer’s resignation, announcing it on social media before Starmer returned to Downing St to make it official on Monday night, NZ time.
Early Tuesday, Labour’s golden boy and heir apparent Andy Burnham was sworn in as an MP, returning to Parliament after a triumphant win over the nationalist populist Reform UK in the Makerfield by-election. Opposition MPs heckled: “He’s not the messiah!”
‘When we used to talk or share a beer occasionally, he always took an interest in people. And he took an interest in New Zealand.’
Roger Sharp
The outgoing mayor of Greater Manchester is well-positioned to take the Labour leadership and to take office as prime minister in September, or earlier, but the past 10 years have ensured there’s no such thing as a sure thing in British politics.
Would his ascent to No 10 offer the UK and its allies the stability they desperately need? It seems unlikely. His focus will not be on shoring up Britain’s international relations, but rather on working quickly to try to address the country’s health and cost of living crises before Nigel Farage has a chance to oust him at the next general election.
Auckland-born Roger Sharp worked with Burnham, first in opposition, and then when they were both senior ministerial advisers in the Tony Blair Labour government.
“The UK, by most people’s read, is going through a tough time at the moment,” the New Zealander tells me. “There’s a strong sense of division and inequality, and a lack of fairness, in parts of the UK. And I think Andy will want to concentrate much more on the domestic agenda, in the short term.
“He will want to focus on those everyday pocketbook issues facing working families in places like Manchester and Leeds, rather than spending all his focus on geopolitical issues outside the borders.”
Burnham faces tough fiscal exam
That said, there’s no great confidence that Burnham would be a good economic manager. He complained last year that Labour ought to get “beyond being in hock to the bond markets” – a big stumble so soon after the historic and violent sell-off of UK government bonds brought Liz Truss’s premiership to a quick end.
And this month, he again spooked the bond markets when he was seemingly unable to answer a BBC interviewer’s question about what the UK government’s self-imposed fiscal rules were – rules he’d pledged to follow. “I’m not going to go through a discussion, like an exam on the fiscal rules,” Burnham said defensively, “I know what the fiscal rules are.”
On the other hand, a good prime minister need not be an expert – he can surround himself with good subject specialists. More important is his leadership and clarity of vision. Those who’ve worked with him say he has a positivity and pragmatism and ability to relate to people on the street, that will count for a lot.
“Keir Starmer was seen as being a bit technocratic, a little bit aloof from the street,” says Sharp. “Andy comes across as a very decent, well-intentioned, average likeable guy.
“When we used to talk or share a beer occasionally, he always took an interest in people. And he took an interest in New Zealand – in elements of what was going on politically in New Zealand and Australia. We’re very similar kinds of markets and countries from a political point of view, so he’ll be interested in what governments and what policies are coming out of this part of the world.
“He’ll be interested, but there will also be a lot of other things on his priority list.”
A fair trade
New Zealand’s Prime Minister has posted his farewell to Starmer on social media. “Together, we were able to deepen and broaden the New Zealand-UK relationship,” Christopher Luxon says. “In the last two years, New Zealand’s exports to the UK have grown 42 percent and we’ve expanded our security ties by working closely together to train Ukrainian soldiers.”
Burnham, by contrast, will want to take issues such as trade and immigration off the political agenda; they offer too many incendiary opportunities for Farage and Reform UK.
That doesn’t mean abandoning New Zealand and its exports, as Britain did previously when it entered the European Economic Community in 1973. Rather, Burnham will want to sideline trade as “business as usual”.
“I’m sure he will put in place members of the team to take elements of the trade agenda off the political agenda, so it becomes a much more kind of business-focused process, making sure the UK and its trading partners have a stable relationship while he concentrates on trying to sort the domestic environment out,” Sharp says.
New Zealand and the UK have signed and ratified a free trade deal, that came into force in 2023, but there is still work to be completed. For instance, the UK still needs to end the transitional quotas that apply to Kiwi beef, lamb, cheese and butter; conversely New Zealand is required to modernise its intellectual property regime to align with the UK.
None of this will be easy. “It’s much easier to be the stalking horse, the person waiting in the wings. When you’ve actually got to take the tough decisions and run the country, that is a very, very difficult job, which is why I think there’s been so much turnover in recent times.”
Localism, nationalism and globalism
Burnham’s nine years as mayor of Greater Manchester were spent implementing the regional deal that’s now a model for New Zealand central and local government. In the process, he became ever more engaged at a community level. Despite, laughs Sharp, being an Everton supporter in deepest Manchester!
Former Selwyn district mayor Sam Broughton visited Burnham in 2024, as president of Local Government NZ. He recalls Burnham had a copy of the record ‘The Queen is Dead’ by his favourite band The Smiths hanging in his office.
“It highlighted to me that connection to place is as much about culture and beauty rather than just control of infrastructure, which councils can often focus on,” Broughton says. “He carried a humility about understanding other people’s perspectives. Sometimes leaders can focus on their own agenda.
“You do need a leader to have purpose, and Andy talked about walking in the shoes of others to learn and develop outcomes for all.”
As Manchester mayor, he had to walk a balance between the interests of his local community and those of the government in London. If he becomes prime minister, that balance will become still more difficult as he decides how much he’ll consider the concerns of the Commonwealth and the wider world.
Many national leaders are now unapologetic about putting their domestic interests first, with scant regard for the rules-based international order.
“As he returns to Westminster, I think that instinct for localism will stay with him, but the frame naturally shifts,” Broughton says. “When you’re a mayor, your place is your city or region. When you’re an MP or prime minister, your place becomes the whole country, so you look at localism differently again. It’s becomes about direction-setting for the nation.”
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